The notion that by sending a few thousand more American troops to Afghanistan we can broker a peace and some sort of coalition with the Taliban is a folly born of desperation to save political face, not win the war Islam has declared on the West.

All neo-cons may be hawks, but not all hawks are neo-cons, who are distinctive in their idealism and robust interventionism. We haven’t heard peans to democracy from Trump, or clarion calls for human rights. He hasn’t seriously embraced regime change anywhere (even if his foreign-policy officials say Assad has to go). He shows no sign of a willingness to make a major commitment of US ground troops.

“I would say John McCain’s been wrong on just about everything over the last four decades. He advocated for the Iraq War, which I think destabilized the Middle East,” said Senator Paul. In this, and many other things about McCain, Senator Paul is right.

Those individuals who openly supported Hillary Clinton by signing the New York Times letter showed themselves to be political opportunists and elitists, not committed limited government constitutional conservatives, and if the Trump team has a blacklist, as far as millions of grassroots conservatives are concerned that’s OK, because their exile should be permanent.

The more toxic Putin-haters can make the Russian president, the more difficult for President Trump to deal with him, even if that is in the vital national interest of the United States. The sort of investigation for which McCain has been clamoring, and the Beltway drums have now begun to beat, could make it almost impossible for President Trump to work with President Putin.

Senator McCain is shocked at the hack of a private party in which no national secrets were compromised or business technologies stolen. Rather, the release actually benefited the American public because the information obtained highlighted the sleaze surrounding the Clintons.

The neo-con counter to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” seems to be shaping up to be “Make Russia Evil Again.” If President-elect Trump wants to drain the swamp in DC, and formulate a new national security policy focused on winning cyberwarfare battles and eradicating ISIS and militant Islam, he should start by draining Obama’s Pentagon.

It appears to us the #NeverTrump cabal had two kinds of members; those who honestly could not bring themselves to support Donald Trump because of his past personal conduct, and those who are actually closer to Hillary Clinton ideologically and opposed Donald Trump because they support amnesty for illegal aliens, open borders, Big Government, a no-win foreign policy or are wilfully blind to the Islamist threat.

Please tell us what you think: Who among the #NeverTrumpers are Redeemable and who are now Irrelevent?

Neoliberals — along with some members of the conservative establishment — consider Republican party nominee Donald Trump to be toxic. Many of them are supporting Clinton because they do not like Trump’s idea of building a wall on the Mexican border to stop illegal immigration. Nor do they appreciate Trump’s slogans about “putting America first” when negotiating trade deals, conducting alliances, and avoiding optional foreign interventions. They hate Trump’s crude, take-no-prisoners invective more than Hillary’s polished and refined lying.

On trade and immigration, the returns are in. Should the GOP go back to globalism, amnesty, or open borders, it will sunder itself and have no future. And if the party is perceived as offering America endless wars in the Middle East and constant confrontations with the great nuclear powers, Russia and China, over specks of land or islets having nothing to do with the vital interests of the United States, then it will see its anti-interventionist wing sheared off.

Whereas neoconservatism advocates spreading American ideals through the use of military force, Trump has made the case for nationalism and a smaller U.S. military footprint. In what Trump calls an "America First" approach, he proposes rejecting alliances that don't work, trade deals that don’t deliver, and military interventionism that costs too much.

Subsidizing prosperous, populous allies and attempting to remake failed states provides little benefit to most Americans, who do the dying and paying. Hillary Clinton’s foreign support actually reinforces Donald Trump’s point: the need for an international policy that advances the interests of the American people.

In the Republican debate, the candidates opposing regime change were Donald Trump, surgeon Ben Carson, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul. The RealClearPolitics average of polls shows that they have the support of 65 percent of likely primary voters. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton also favors regime change. Rubio=Hillary.

Sarah Palin issued a backhanded compliment to Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, commending her most recent column while at the same time faulting her for taking so long to come around to defending conservatives.

Two of the limited government constitutional conservative “boat rockers,” Representatives Trey Radel (FL-19) and Tom Massie (KY-4), whom we endorsed in the 2012 primaries are living-up to our expectations and fighting to force the Obama administration back inside the strict limits of the Constitution – especially with regard to Obama’s foolish adventure into the Syrian civil war.

As Senator Rand Paul noted, the problem “with constantly intervening in these troubled parts of the world is that there are often no clear good guys or bad guys. Today's ally can quickly become tomorrow's enemy. This should be a paramount and obvious concern, but in Washington it is almost always treated as an afterthought.” Obama, neo-cons in Congress, the 40 U.S. military personnel we just sent to Egypt as “peacekeepers,” and the average American taxpayer, must now face the reality that, despite the trillions invested, our American government has done a lousy job of picking winners and losers in foreign political contests.